Discussions

ZDnet is hosting an article by the Gartner Group that enumerates over six things that Web services will fail to deliver, and six corresponding areas where Web services will succeed. The article is a good hype breaker, that also provides a practical look at the benefits of Web Services.

They are right that companies will ease into web services, by initially deploying and consuming behind the firewall.

I take issue with web services being provided on a subscription basis. They will be charged on a per invocation basis. It makes no sense that a subscriber that uses a web service 10 times a month pays the same price as one that uses it a million times. A revenue model based on advertising is of course not an option ;-)

Funny that some folks still take Gartner seriously. I mean, they interview people, wrap up their common beliefs in amazingly sharp and witty analysis such as "business transforms business, technology does not" (e.g. the phone did not transform business I guess) or "trust is important" (duh), publish an appetizer, then sell the rest in vastly overpriced, boring reports and seminars, and there you go: managers who dislike thinking by themselves buy them and define their strategy based on that + a 15-minute demo of Visual Studio .Net ("only 17 lines of code vs 28 with evil J2EE!").

I read the criticism of the Gartner group and the analyst's profession and strongly disagree. First of all, research companies like Gartner are not in the business of lying. That's a big differentiator compared to marketing departments of companies or other organizations.

But please note that I do make (and you should make) a clear distinction between an analyst working for a research company like Gartner and an analyst working for an nvestment bank. Within the i-banks, the conflicts of interest can be overwhelming.

Next, most analysts I met where rather better qualified in their technical subject areas then most journalists in the IT trade press. Don't get me wrong, there are very good technical journalists out there, but IMHO there's a gap (I've worked as an analyst for two years and also wrote many pieces in the IT press).

Next, I've personally witnessed to often that a good research report or study can make all the difference for major clients in huge spending decisions. It really *is* worth spending a little money on planning your tanker's route before starting the corporate engines.

Next, the truth can be very simple ("everybody could have said that, why is it special?" doesn't count if nobody has said or dared to say it yet!). I wrote an article in 1997 that created a big stink in Germany because the gist of the article was "don't believe in the IA-64 Merced hype yet, whatever Intel, MDR and others say". One of the major Unix workstation vendors that had committed to IA-64 too early went through the pain of writing a letter to every single customer in Germany explaining to them why that article was wrong and why IA-64 was so good. Where is IA-64 today?!? Independent advice is very very valuable. It can be wrong, but at least it isn't biased from the start.

And btw, if you are a manager of a big company, often you simply don't have the time to "think by yourself". It is a much cleverer strategy to find a trusted person to think for the manager on a subproblem, then to take a quick look at the results, and then implement them if they agree with the manager's gut feeling.

Last not least, regarding pricing: An up-to-date 100 page report on an important topic may cost you say 1000-2000 Dollars. That's the equivalent of 1-2 consulting days. Spend that money wisely at the beginning of a project and you save yourself possibly millions later.

Cheers,
Henrik Klagges
TNGtech

PS: Once, my manager at the research group I worked for received an offer to be bribed by a huge international company. He calmly answered "No. Bribing us would exceed your resources" which created a furor at that company :), because they where so rich and accustomed to getting their way just with money! And guess what: Before working at that research group, he was a research director at Gartner. The Gartner Group had good people and still has good people today.

Hi Henrik,
I agree that a lot of good analysis does get done at the these research places but they also spew out a lot of garbage to grab attention.
Anybody remember the grand vision of 'convergence'?
Also the comparasions to the investment banking is natural. Just like a Financial analyst sets a $1000 target on Amazon,Gartner/etc predict that companies will spend 50 gazillion dollars on the coolest technologly by 2005. The bar graphs showing the projected spendings have always been a source of amusement for us developers.
Also I disagree with someone who said that middle/upper managers don't have the time to do their own research. In most cases they have no inclination to understand what's going on and more often than not they don't trust their developers. They like somebody wearing suits to give them a nice bounded report which they can use to present to their upper management and cover their behinds in case something goes wrong.

I agree with what Alain has written (minus the sarcasm ;-) ) All this Analysis/Prediction/Peek into the future etc. is nothing else but a sum total of what all of us feel. Haven't we all seen the predictions of Stock Analysts during the Dot Com Era?

Finally everybody is looking to make some money in the current recession. So this is just one more idea in a new bottle. I don't see any difference from the client server era to the current web services era. It is the same old idea in a new facade. What I like about Web Services is the fact that we finally have all the top players agreeing to the same standards.

This gives a shot in the arm to Open Source software development. And maybe this may signal the rise of Linux and force Sun to reconsider its decision and make JAVA open source. Wishful thinking some may say :-)

Ahh, the next silver bullet. It never ceases to amaze me how some developers are hopping from technology to technology in an attempt to find a cure all.

Who will win from web services? The vendors of the tools of course. They have to keep making up "new technologies" to push products out the door. Its amazing how many developers bite instead of stickign with solid technology and good developer practice.

Developers as a whole seem to have gotten lazy. However, that isnt fair really. The fact is that the industry has been flooeded by stacks of pseudo developers that put Software Engineer on their business card because they can use Visual Basic or another RAD tool. Then, the real devs are called in to clean up the inevitable catastrophic mess.

The code I have seen at the last 5 contracts I did was just sick. Written by people that dont really understand what they are doing.

You can sit back with the picket sign chanting "web services" all you want. In the end, the tool vendors will rake in the cash and you will slip to the next great thing. Then they will rake in more cash.

When is the J2EE community going to finally realize that the future isnt in Retail-customer-supplier relationsips but in integrating software in N-tier deployments. You would have thought the collapse of e-commerce would have been a hint. I guess some people didnt catch it.

Yes I agree with you! Lot of "devs" don't know what they are doing and don't like people pointing out there mistake or taking advice from other people.

I am only a fresh grad. and I have worked for 2 companies. I have found that 90% of devs (even the senior dev) don't really understand the very basic idea of OO (how to make code practically reusable). I just hope one day the position of programmers is based on their ability but not the experience they have.

I agree completely about the problem with poorly designed and poorly writen code. The amount and degree of incompentence in the software industry is stunning. Software development needs to be treated as an engineering discipline the way that electronics is.

Poor implementation can ruin good ideas. In other fields they call it execution. It doesn't matter how good your strategies and ideas are if you don't execute them well. I'm afraid that by inviting VB developers to write web services we will be increasing the amount of poorly designed and written code.

We work in an insdustry that lacks any certification process, and anybody can claim to be a Software Engineer or Architect. The corporate hiring process is really flawed in the sense that it often fails to differentiate the really good engineers from the rest.

To make matters worse, the bar was significantly lowered during the dot com boom and lot of incompetent people were allowed into our industry. I have interviewed "Software Engineers" laid off from dot com, who could not give me the algorithm for finding the maximum in an array of integers.

Pranab: "To make matters worse, the bar was significantly lowered during the dot com boom and lot of incompetent people were allowed into our industry. I have interviewed "Software Engineers" laid off from dot com, who could not give me the algorithm for finding the maximum in an array of integers."

You don't need the biggest integer if you're a first-mover. Mindshare and eyeballs are all this market needs. We'll make it up on quantity ;-)

Today the "Senior Dev" in my company tried to deploy the application But they really can't make crappy, slow and buggy application run stablely for 10 mins and keep yelling that "J2EE is lousy and blah blah...."

For a developer i think it is very important to have a certain level of "logical thinking". I believe even I hadn't programmed for 10 yrs I can still able to find the biggest integer. It's okay for the people who don't know programming to be successful but please don't take on the Senior Dev position and use dirty skill to keep themselve in their position.

Here's a pet peeve I have : young punks who are probably good programmers thinking that that particular skill is all that one needs to be classified as a "Senior Developer". A word of friendly advice - wait until you have gathered 10 or more years of experience in various roles/technologies before commenting on what does or does not constitute a "Senior Developer".

Yes, Robert, You have my vote. I have matured into software when client server was a real buzz word in late 80s and early 90s and then it was OOPS (pun intended) and distributed computing and ...it still continues.

The reality is that we have seen plethora of tools and RAD machines, but have not seen a great CASE tool risiing ! simply because clients want short cut. ISVs have found the sweet spot of ROI in the form of those products that have extremely short half life, and the net result is the chaos we see today. SOAP is promising but I see this web services as a short term cash crop.

It's funny - the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear comments from "the old guard" that pertain to how easy today's developers have it and how pathetic today's developers' skills are compared to the tough brutal world of C++/SmallTalk/Cobol/Fortran gurus of yesteryear is:

Maybe the developers haven't gotten any lazier.. maybe *you* have just gotten more arrogant.

Secondly ,when I hear the Mensa-members snort out things like "... and this guy couldn't even tell me what the algorithm for the maximum value in an array is... " , I think about what that reveals about Mr.Mensa's screening process. For example, if you are about to create a terribly complex application and you need an experienced software engineer in the traditional sense, then yes, obviously you should not be interviewing people who strictly have only eCommerce development experience. That's akin to me going up to one of these self-proclaimed engineers and asking him or her how they would handle themselves in a hostile personnel situation. They wouldn't have the slightest clue, and they would tell you straight out "We don't care, we're engineers, not psychologists.". And I would agree with them.
Is it too much to ask that we make a distinction between developers and engineers, and that each position is proud of what they do? A developer is a person who builds on top of already-built products and code bases. An engineer is a person who MAKES the products and code bases. A developer takes business requirements and user needs, balances them with know environmental restrictions and future goals, and then combines this knowledge/experience with a modest amount of programming skills in order to build a working application. A developer is NOT an engineer and should not claim to be. However, an engineer is NOT a developer and should also not claim to be.
The engineers who complain how sick and tired they are of all these "posers" in the industry most likely have legitimate complaints, but please don't forget to write a disclaimer whenever you start your tirades about developers. The disclaimer should state quite honestly that engineers could not do a developer's job, and developers likewise can not do an engineer's job.
How does this mix in with Web Services? Even a "simple developer" can use Web Services. If the developer is really smart, he can probably abstract out what used to be very complex networking concepts ( ie. HTTP vs RMI/IIOP, XML messaging vs. non-XML messaging - advantages and disadvantages, etc etc ) and never have the need to delve further into the deeper technical issues.
That is, only if the engineer who built the application using Web Services was competent... But engineers always are, aren't they?

You are spewing garbage here. Software Engineers are a special group of people that have special skills. If you can use a RAD tool, you wont raise any eyebrows in my department. Any moron can use a RAD tool. Developers are cut from a different bolt of cloth. One that allows them to resolve complex problems in a dynamic world in an efficient manner. Those that use "web services" or other rad tools rank up there with "perl programmers" in the food chain. That is that they are a joke. If you want to develop software, learn the concepts. Stop trying to take shortcuts and stop thinking you can buy your solution and with a few key strokes slap it together. Senior software engineers as a whole are sick of cleaning up the resulting messes.

Further, I was not referring to COBOL, C++ or FORTRAN. I was referring to java development where about 75% of the people I encounter arent worth even glancing at their over-rated resume. Id rather start with a fresh math grad and form him then deal with some guy that thinks he can program because he did some eCommerce somewhere. I hate to tell you this pal, but eCommerce is and always has been a joke. A doomed joke. The fact that the crash in the eCommerce market hasnt convinced you of that is just mind boggling.

The future of the industry is integrating heterogenous software in a flexible environment. Web services is the latest installment in the joke of eCommerce. The fact is that the idea of "put up your own online store and make a million" is preposterous. And where there arent the stores, there isnt the jobs.

On the other hand, integrating component modules from partner companies into your IT architecture is where the real strength of j2ee lies. My inteview questions center on your ability to think on your feet and how well you understand concepts. If you cant answer "What is the difference between a class and an object?" send your resume elsewhere.

Basil: Pat yourself on the back. I would do it myself, but I'm not standing behind you am I?

Robert: I do not disagree with you. You are correct when you say 75% of people doing Java don't know what they are doing. In fact if you said 90% you still won't here any argument from me.

The fact remains however that "tools" and not technology rules the marketplace. I spent years in this industry being underpaid because I was interested in doing things that were "cool" when managers recruiters wanted to see what was "hot". Never mind that I may be able to single-handedly churn out a J2EE quality application server single handedly. Did I work on WebSphere 3.5.0.2 or not? If I worked on 3.0.2 it was not good enough. I know C++, so what? Did I know Visual C++? You see, all tool vendors have one thing on their mind, how to get the customer to lock in to their product. Do you really forsee a company becoming a BEA shop from an IBM shop? Not going to happen. And Web Services is not going to change that.

The people who have suceeded in the marketplace are those who are "engineers doing the cool stuff" and "developers who know about the hottest fad". My quest is to be someone in between. Why? Because the engineer in me let's me look at myself in the mirror. And the developer in me let's me put food on the table for my family. Okay, not just food, but good food, so sue me.

I regret the fact that you have become abrasive to my post; however, I must point out that you seem to be more interested in showing how silly or ridiculous people can be rather than talking about the facts.
Robert, I do not doubt your assertions: I, too, believe that a good software engineer should know the difference between a class and an object. What I take exception to is your unrelenting desire to jab at a legitimate position in a corporation: that of the Developer.
Yes, it is because I have played the roles of both engineer and developer, and I have found both to be highly satisfying. The fact that you are continuously trying to make developers sound like chumps tells me that you either have not met a good developer, or that you have had the misfortune of working with an over-ambitious developer who joined your engineering team.
Either way, I am hoping that you clarify what it is that has made you so hostile to the people in this position.
Finally, your attitude on Web Services is exactly what is wrong with the tech world today. Robert, Web Services is not about making engineers' lives easier... it's about making developers' lives easier.
You *do* remember why you were hired to be an engineer in the first place don't you?

<Those that use "web services" or other rad tools rank up there with "perl programmers" in the food chain. That is that they are a joke.
>>>

Ok, time for a couple of reality checks. I'd hate to see the screen door of public opinion swing as far out of touch on the backlash than it was during the hype.

My partner and I programmed an e-commerce site for a medical rehab supplies company back in 1997. We charged $2000 because we wanted to learn web programming. Plus the designer had already soaked them fro $8k and they were out of money. Features include a highly customized catalog display for 4000+ SKUs, search, shopping cart, order processing, numerous admin, logging and promo features. All this runs on 20 or so Perl scripts totalling less 100k in size. The product database is an Excel spreadsheet that the product managers can edit and save as tab-delimited text.

I now work for a large corporation developing web-apps on the standard large corporation J2EE framework. The Perl site I described above is still twice as snappy as anything comparable that I've ever seen out of a servlet engine. And I'm a J2EE advocate. Could the Perl site scale to Amazonian size tomorrow? No. Could we handle 10 times our current business (which would actually constitute a very healthy percentage of the entire US market) tomorrow? Absolutely.

Sure there are pieces of the old code that make me blush when I look at them now, even for Perl. Yet the site still just works. In the past I've gone over six months without needing to touch it. But I suppose I need to inform my little rehab client that in light of current thinking, anything less than the bare-minimum $750k Weblogic/Oracle/BMC Patrol/etc. package would be a joke.

<I hate to tell you this pal, but eCommerce is and always has been a joke.
>>>

The site above started off processing one order every few days and is now up to 10 orders a day, from all over the world. (You know I wouldn't make numbers like that up.) Not bad for what was a strictly regional phone/mail order company in a niche industry that generally did about 100 orders a day total over the phone. Last year, they also broke their old record for signing up new commercial clients by about 100%. E-commerce is not a joke, only the expectations were. The internet represents a new medium, marketplace and sales channel that IMO will continue to evolve into a nice percentage of overall profit for smart companies in the right industries.

A tool's worth is nothing more or less than the measure of how well it performs the task at hand. It has no intrinsic ability to be a joke or otherwise. You might want to stick your head above the cubicle every know and then and look at the big picture. I guarantee the people who do the hiring and firing do.

What?!?!? PERL?!?!?! You must be incompetant. What a joke you are!
What?!?!?! You worked for a dot.com? You must be a poser.
What?!?!?! You claim that you put together a successful dot.com!?!!?!? You must be lying.

Basil,
What's this artificial distinction between developers and engineers? I see myself playing both roles all the time in my projects and I am happy playing both roles.

According to your definition, a Developer may know 10 hot RAD tools but does not necessarily have have to know how to find the max in an array of integers. Come on, get real. Even an ECommerce "Developer" may have a need to find the most expensive item in a shopping cart. The notion of the so called "Application Assembler" who builds applications by plugging together prebuilt components using RAD tools without writing any code is a myth and not reality.

I am sorry. But there is no room for such "Developers" in my projects. I would rather wear the developer hat and do it myself.

On my projects we don't have the luxury of having two distinct sets of skills - developer and engineeer - everyone has to do both. I agree with Pranab - the application assembler is not a roll that I have seen in my work, much more myth than reality in my experience. Perhaps people who have formed an opinion of themselves as "Engineers" might make a big deal out of the differences that they may think are there - but it doesn't hold sway in the world in which I work.

<Pranab>
What's this artificial distinction between developers and engineers? I see myself playing both roles all the time in my projects and I am happy playing both roles.
</Pranab>

The very fact that you use the term "both roles" contradicts your assertion that it is an artificial distinction.

<Pranab>
The notion of the so called "Application Assembler" who builds applications by plugging together prebuilt components using RAD tools without writing any code is a myth and not reality.
</Pranab>

I agree with you, in fact I think that "Application Assembler" is an excellent task for a Developer in that deployment descriptors demand high-level knowledge of how the J2EE APIs work and what their purposes are. A Developer would not be expected to rip open the container and re-code the threading module if the JDBC-implemented CMP module was not up to par; instead, a developer would need to understand that the engineers have built the container for many reasons besides performance, and that the developer is expected to use the tools that the engineers have provided in order to manipulate the Container. Isn't that what the engineers wanted? Standardized containers? If so, then I really hope that the Developers are smart enough to have the high-level ability to abstract out the need for coding and instead concentrate on working WITH the engineers instead of against them.

<Pranab>
I am sorry. But there is no room for such "Developers" in my projects. I would rather wear the developer hat and do it myself.
</Pranab>

That comment is meant to show that you are an engineer who can also wear many other hats. Great, fabulous, you are definitely someone I want to talk to. But I don't understand why you use the comment "such 'Developers'". Do you honestly think that some no-brain moron is going to get hired into a position that requires innovative and deductive reasoning? If so, then take out your anger on your HR department, who must be bigger morons than these "pathetic developers" since they were the ones who hired the developer in the first place.
The only thing I liked about your post is that you insinuate that there are some great developers out there, unlike Robert who basically thinks that if somebody comes up with a decent idea using Web Services, the guy should be shot on the spot for the good of the human race.

I'm currently working as lead-developer on a medium-sized web-app for a large company. I have to worry about everything from whipping out a quick button in Photoshop to cranking out the UML, to setting the max-heap size on the app-server. We have as resources a web designer, a DBA and a Weblogic admin--who mostly just keeps the machine and servers running. Everything in-between is up for grabs.

Obviously our company should be at least a little more specialized, and probably will become so as technologies mature and the pace of change in web development slows. But until then, we still have to get the job done one way or another. I imagine that in the 50's a good computer programmer probably also had to be at least somewhat competent in electrical engineering. I think it's always been true that to be productive in IT (or perhaps any field) you should have a working knowledge of what happens on a level below and a level above your own. It's just the levels that keep splitting and narrowing.

My point about perl and cgi is that a real software engineer can do in a day what takes most of the posers a month. Why? Because we understand the concepts, not justh ow to wire someone's scripts together. I use php and even perl from time to time when the question merits it. However this is extremely trivial work that doesnt even exercise brain cells.

My point about the issue is simply this. If you think web services is going to cure the problems of businesses, you aredreaming. The problems of businesses are orders of magnitude more complex than that.

In the end, there are two types of software engineering people. The first type slings rad tools and buzzwords around like paper in a ticker tape parade. The second group cuts through the BS and gets to the heart of the issues. Web services isnt the answer to the needs of businesses. Web services is yet another trap to suck money out of businesses and delay the inevitable. That being that eventually they are going to need some real Software Engineers to refactor the blasted thing and build a solution that will work in the long run in a living and dynamic business.

OK, I think I understand here... what you're saying is that you are tired of hearing about Web Services as being this glorified Holy Grail of interoperability. The fact is that Web Services is but one single component of a professionally integrated enterprise enviornment, requiring the expertise of highly qualified software engineers in order to be functional. That may be too abstract; let's go into more detail. A Web Service is nothing if not connected to business objects such as EJBs. EJBs are nothing if not derived from higher level concepts such as design patterns that optimize specific usage case scenarios. The whole mess rests on the abilities of several software engineers who understand the concepts of portability, flexibility, transparency and encapsulation of integrated business modules of code.
If that's what you're saying, I am on your side. If what you're saying is that there is no role for Developers, Business Analysts, Systems Analysts, DBAs, Program and Project Managers, and non-technical human resources, then I respectfully decline your suggestions. The whole reason for a Software Engineer's existence is to provide the world with reliable, robust, and professionally crafted software in order to enable real-life enterprise solutions, whether they be for businesses, medical enterprises, mom & pop shops, and so forth...
I still don't get why there is this colossal resentment for the other people in our industry who play a part in this process. But you may be just trying to make a point, I guess.

<Basil>
"If what you're saying is that there is no role for Developers, Business Analysts, Systems Analysts, DBAs, Program and Project Managers, and non-technical human resources, then I respectfully decline your suggestions."
</Basil>

You are missing the point. We all know that it takes all kinds of people, technical or not, for any real world project. Yhe real bitterness is against imposters who after a history degree in college take 6 months training in JSP and start calling themeselves Sofware Engineers. Do you think any other profession e.g., medical will allow that?

That's the first time that I have heard a particular situation. I'm not arguing with that, I agree with it too.
My problem was with the sweeping comments being made by Mr. Simmons in which he proclaimed ALL developers inadequate. I thought that his comment was ludicrously ignorant.

But let's not get caught up in technicalities. Your most recent post was 100% on the mark. Thank you for shedding some light on what a traditional software engineer's needs and wants are. Obviously, many of your recent assignments have been cleaning up crap left over by incompetent professionals, whether they be developers or engineers. I can see how that would make you bitter.
All I'm trying to point out here is that, as you said, everybody has a role to play in the software process. I would hate to think that at some point during my past assignments as a Java Developer, I was resented because I actually was able to participate in a critical manner with my engineers ( within my boundaries of course ). If this sweeping attitude that all developers are morons and posers is perpetuated, then it makes it unfairly difficult on the developers who actually give a damn.
By the way, the reason that I have considered myself half-and-half is because even though I started my career out as a Business Analyst, then a Systems Analyst, I found myself more and more intrigued with coding. After gaining certification in Object Oriented programming, I found that the coding was pretty much an afterthought if you had good foundations in design. Basically, if you had good managers and good teammates with a rock-solid design and decent requirements, the coding was the easiest part of the iterative process. I made several JMS systems in B2B frameworks, along with EJB Business objects, etc etc... but I found that I was most needed as that layer between the engineers and the Business Analysts; thus, I like to think that a Developer is a great job, and a much appreciated one.
Thank you for your clarification.

<Pranab>
is against imposters who after a history degree in college take 6 months training in JSP and start calling themeselves Sofware Engineers
<Pranab>

ha.. I think I am being called imposter. But what you said is non-sense. Who will be tricked by a fresh grad. (any fresh grad got high paid just by pretending profession or got a Senior or Architect position )? Imposter are those who have been in the industry for a long time but what they mainly do in the office is surfing the net, talking, hanging around.... just used very little afford to make some crappy programs.

<Pranab>take 6 months training in JSP<Pranab>

You can just see that people only use the experience to measure the other.

Also, when did I said that?? I learnt J2EE by myself not in the college. I learnt it just because I like it and I think a person with good java skill and seriously learn/use J2EE for 9 months (I have read few books and lots of articles from javaworld, theserverside, onjava,...) can have a good understanding about J2EE.

BTW I still say I am learning J2EE because I will still keep looking for a better way to develop J2EE application and I believe that what most developers don't do.

Additionally, I haven't called myself software engineer.

I really don't want to spand the time in replying this message but I really doubt that you are the kind of "sinor developer" I have described before and I just hope the junior developers in your company will be distressed because they have obtained better skill in a shorter time.

Chill out. Stop being so defensive. My post had nothing to do with you personally. I have no problem with smart people who can think analytically and logically picking up software skills. You don't seem to belong to the kind of people I was referring to.

I dont resent anyone. I get miffed at people that try to ski out of their limits and then beg for help when they impale themself on a tree. Peeling them off gets tedious as does cleaning up the messes created by posers.

Web services will solve some issues and not solve others. Its a technology, not a cure for all the computing woes of the world. Should I find the need for a service I will use it.

On the other hand, posers tend to toss everything into their pet technogy of the month. Want a device driver for that new palm pilot attachment, write it as a web service. Its rediculous. The difference between posers and engineers is that engineers know when and when not to use individual technologies. We dont hop on the bandwagon chanting the magic chant.

Web services barely even exist and people are counting on them to solve their problems. Soon they will hop to next big cure. In the meantime these posers leave a trail of software destruction that a real engineer has to cleanup.

There are many roles in development. All are very important from the non-programmer domain expert to the senior engineer. Stay within your role and within your limits.

I personally think there needs to be a licensing board for certification of Professional Software Engineers.

Apple has invented the Drag and Drop into Re-cycle bin for Delete. Successful. a Big NO.
Microsoft just copied, did marketing and rest is history.

The question here is not whether you work for NASA or a web site Development. You are not successful as well as satisfied unless you do something which effects lots of people. Or in other words, thing that works and is useful to human and which is invented on right time is the best thing. And the one who is associated with it, is the best coder, best manager etc. You all people might give such guys null value. But just give it a second thought, does that matter what you guys are saying here.

Don't all of just want to be successful rather than be best in our domain.

" But let's not get caught up in technicalities. Your most recent post was 100% on the mark. "

I was using this as a reference to the general body of people we consider developers. The clause, as a whole, in this context means in an overall fashion or general sense. It does not indicate an absolute of 100%. I can, however, see how this would be misinterpreted. However, I stick by the notion that the majority of developers are lazy bums.

-Somebody might have to refactor your software someday so dont complain about having to refactor somebody's code. Its the nature of the game.

-So you look down on perl programmers presumably because all they have to do is use prewritten modules which in turn makes their job seem 'trivial'. But thats the name of the game. Simplification. As a software engineer you probably have a toolbox of methodologies none of which you formulated yourself but nevertheless leverage. That does'nt make your work trivial, just simpler, to a level you can work at efficiently.

<Martin Yu>
<Pranab>
is against imposters who after a history degree in college take 6 months training in JSP and start calling themeselves Sofware Engineers
<Pranab>

ha.. I think I am being called imposter. But what you said is non-sense. Who will be tricked by a fresh grad. (any fresh grad got high paid just by pretending profession or got a Senior or Architect position )? Imposter are those who have been in the industry for a long time but what they mainly do in the office is surfing the net, talking, hanging around.... just used very little afford to make some crappy programs.
</Martin Yu>

To Martin Yu I say:

-Man you cant even follow this discussion properly and you want us to believe you are the one guy who is right in you company. You seem to think everybody is talking about you when they are not. You probably think everybody in your company is talking about you as well. You misinterpreted the written word here and your chances of misinterpreting the spoken word are rather high.

I consider people that can ONLY use perl or ONLY do a script or ONLY use rad tools as non software engineers. If they dont advertise themselves as software engineers but as script rpogrammers that they are, then I have no problem with it.

Ive said it like 20 times but lets try it again.

Program within your limits. Dont try to make architectural decisions when you are unqualified to do so. Dont profess x language is better than y language unless you have done both of them EXTENSIVELY so that you are an expert in both. Stay within your limits. If programmers and software engieers would remember this simple rule, the body of code in the world would look a lot nicer.

As for my code, I wave my hand dismissively. We refactor things in it daily. But since its a distributed object system, such refactoring is mostly trivial.

As for my respect for other professions. I have tons of respect for people from auto mechanics to physicists. Even the guy that takes out my garbage I have respect for. However, if my auto mechanic starts telling me how to write a computer program he will loose my respect and be laughed at. In the same manner that I should be laughed at if I presume to tell him about repairing cars.

Posers are not bad because they dont have the skills. They are bad because they dont have the skills and yet profess that they do have the skills. My physics prof was awesome. My mathematics teachers were a mixed bag but mostly really cool. My CS professors couldnt program their way out of a wet paper bag without a road map.

Respect is an earned thing, not a givent thing. I could care less if you have PhD of CS in your name. If you cant deliver what you advertise then you are just a poser. The same way I would be a poser if I went to try to fix a car. Perl programmers get lots of respect from me if they dont try and tell me that they are architects because they can write a script here and there. Allot of excellent work is best done in perl.

The problem with the industry today is that there are a TON of posers. In fact I would say the posers outnumber the real software engineers by 2 or 3 to one. They just make the job of the real Software Engineer more difficult.

That's a horrible story.
Although there is likely another side to it, I urge you to reconsider your decision to remain silent on important topics such as those, and also to resist the urge to categorize your personality as arrogant.
Many times in this industry, we find that interpersonal skills are just as important as technical ones. Other times, we are frustrated to learn that with some people in authority, no amount of logic or reason will change their behaviour and decisions. If you are in one of these kinds of companies, I feel for you.
However, please keep in mind that there are many places of business that do not employ a policy of absolute servitude, and the worst thing you could do right now is to assume that ALL people are like the ones you work with. If you were to do that, you would become bitter and angry with life, and you would probably form opinions that make no sense.

Getting back to the original Web Services debate...Thanks to the wise generic name "Web Service", any company with half a marketing brain can say - hey our software kind of uses the web, and hey, our software provides a kind of service, let's sell it as a web service and make millions. Our customers won't know the difference! Yeah, great idea and no extra work needed - keep building the same software, just update the marketing pitch and you're good to go. Isn't it amazing how companies and software can adapt so quickly to the next big thing?

Newsworthy post, to the effect that yes, Gartner is still putting out coconut reports, ZD is propogating them, and manager coconuts will love, read and support them. They'll probably even click on one of the IT adverts on the page.

In my opinion:
The term "Web Service" was coined by Philip Greenspun in 1998.
The term was used by many smart folks to differentiate their work from a traditional "Web Site". (dynamicism, personalization, etc, etc, etc) and built some smart web services.
The term trickled up through the industry as folks saw how these smartly designed apps were called "Web Services" and so must be somehow magically better than "Web App" "Web Database" or whatever.

So now here in the last couple years we can see how the hype-marketers moved from Linux/OSS, to P2P, to "Web Services."

But do you know what the real Next Big Thing is going to be?
Just wait and watch... it's going to be a nice surprise, if
the OSS/benevolent developer community can protect it from the corporations.

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